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TOP STORY
When 34-year-old Russian national Nomma Zarubina addressed a Parliament Hill “post-Russia” conference late last month, attendees likely expected to meet an anti-Putin dissident.
Zarubina’s social media — in addition to frequent glamour shots — was filled with slams against the Russian government. There was as a photo of her at a 2023 protest in New York carrying a sign reading “Kremlin ≠ Russians.” Or another post in which she stood alone outside the UN headquarters to accuse the Russian delegation within of promoting “war & grief among Slavs.”
During Zarubina’s visit to Ottawa, she even made a point of attending a Ukrainian flag raising. On Nov. 18, the Embassy of Ukraine hosted a flag raising ceremony at Parliament Hill attended by several MPs, including Rob Oliphant, parliamentary secretary to the minister of foreign affairs.
Zarubina was in the crowd and uploaded pictures of the ceremony to Facebook with the caption, “When you are in the right place and at the right time.”
But according to FBI allegations made against Zarubina just hours after her return from Canada, the Brooklyn-based Russian national might have been working for Putin the whole time.
In a Nov. 21 criminal complaint filed before a U.S. District Court, FBI agent Peter Dubrowski said that Zarubina had been in “regular communication” with the FSB (Russia’s Federal Security Service) and “had agreed to help the FSB with particular tasks to perform in the United States.”
Attending an Ottawa “decolonization” conference was well within her alleged FSB purview. As the complaint read, Zarubina had been given the codename “Alyssa” and given the job of doing “network marketing” for Russia “with the goal of cultivating relationships in the U.S. and elsewhere.”
The complaint also stated that Zarubina had been interviewed by the FBI in both April 2021 and September 2023, and she denied any FSB contacts.
Charged with making false statements to the FBI, Zarubina was released on a US$25,000 bond.
She would tell reporters after the fact that she had believed she was scheduled for another FBI meeting, and hadn’t expected the arrest. In a Russian-language Facebook post issued on Tuesday, she spoke of a “constructive dialogue” with law enforcement, and in comments to Britain’s The Independent, she said she “was honest with the FBI, except for two episodes in 2021 and 2023.”
The Nov. 19 event in Ottawa was called Rethinking Russia’s Future, and it was organized by the Free Nations PostRussia Forum, a group that refers to Russia as “not a real federation” and seeks the country’s breakup into its component “captive nations.”
“We engage in an anti-colonial national liberation struggle against the Moscow’s imperialism,” reads an outline for the forum, which was hosted in the Wellington Building, an office just across the street from Parliament Hill that hosts about 70 MP offices.
Amid Circassians, Buryats, Chechens and others, Zarubina was there to represent her native Siberia. In a Facebook post promoting her Rethinking Russia’s Future appearance, Zarubina had written, “I am traveling to Ottawa to connect with passionate social activists, influential politicians, and innovative thinkers from American think tanks.”
She added, “I will deliver an inspiring speech that highlights the causes that drive me.”
The speech ended up being less than three minutes long. In the complete address, uploaded to YouTube, Zarubina describes Siberia as a land rich in resources and tourism potential that is kept in poverty by Russian corruption.
“Why do people still face poverty in Siberia when we have everything to get money and develop (the) economy? The main problem is the criminalization of the Russian authorities,” she said.
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The Rethinking Russia’s Future forum appears to be Zarubina’s first attendance at a Canadian networking event, although in early November she posted several posed Facebook photos documenting an apparent leisure trip to Montreal. Zarubina, wearing a Canada scarf, appears alone in several selfies with a Russian caption of “I welcome you Montreal.”
But it’s in the U.S. where Zarubina’s networking has been most prolific, with her Instagram documenting encounters with everyone from prominent Ukrainian diaspora figures to Bill Burns, the current director of the CIA, who she met at a book signing.
As Zarubina’s arrest made headlines, several Russian analysts also noted that if you scroll far enough on her social media accounts, images will begin to appear that seem very much at odds with her identity as an anti-Putin Russian expat. These include pictures of her in a “Property of KGB Summer Camp” t-shirt and even posing in front of an FSB logo.
The FBI accused decolonial activist Nomma Zarubina, who advocated for an independent Siberian state (pic 1), of working for the FSB, Russia’s (counter)intelligence agency. Excellent counter-intelligence work. Who would’ve thought?!
pics 2-4 from her social media pic.twitter.com/azKT0K9CsE— Kirill Shamiev (@kirlant) December 3, 2024
IN OTHER NEWS
Although Canada isn’t technically in recession, Bank of Canada governor Stephen Poloz said this week that the country is basically in a recession, but has papered over the damage with record-high immigration. The idea of Canada being in a “per capita recession” has been bouncing around the financial sector for more than a year at this point. A recession is when you have two consecutive quarters (six months) of negative growth, which Canada hasn’t experienced because GDP growth is still barely keeping its head above water. But when you factor in that Canada has added about three million extra people in the last few years, it means that everyone’s individual share of that economy is getting smaller. As Poloz said, the only thing preventing Canada going into recession on paper is that “we’ve been swamped with new immigrants who buy the basics in life, and that boosts our consumption enough.”
Quebec has just devised a possible solution to the Canadian doctor shortage: Indentured servitude. Under the scheme, anybody who studies medicine in Quebec would be required to work in the Quebec public health system for at least five years. If a newly graduated doctor ignores the requirement and gets a job somewhere else, Quebec could hit them with fines of up to $200,000 per day. So, conceivably, under this law if you graduate from the McGill School of Medicine and immediately get a job at a private clinic, in the first year you’ll personally be on the hook for $73 million. This is where we should note that Canada, unlike most other democratic countries, artificially limits the number of students that can be accepted to medical schools each year. As recently as 2018, the Government of Quebec cut the number of students allowed into Quebec medical schools, arguing that too many doctors were graduating.
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IN OTHER NEWS
Although Canada isn’t technically in recession, Bank of Canada governor Stephen Poloz said this week that the country is basically in a recession, but has papered over the damage with record-high immigration. The idea of Canada being in a “per capita recession” has been bouncing around the financial sector for more than a year at this point. A recession is when you have two consecutive quarters (six months) of negative growth, which Canada hasn’t experienced because GDP growth is still barely keeping its head above water. But when you factor in that Canada has added about three million extra people in the last few years, it means that everyone’s individual share of that economy is getting smaller. As Poloz said, the only thing preventing Canada going into recession on paper is that “we’ve been swamped with new immigrants who buy the basics in life, and that boosts our consumption enough.”
Quebec has just devised a possible solution to the Canadian doctor shortage: Indentured servitude. Under the scheme, anybody who studies medicine in Quebec would be required to work in the Quebec public health system for at least five years. If a newly graduated doctor ignores the requirement and gets a job somewhere else, Quebec could hit them with fines of up to $200,000 per day. So, conceivably, under this law if you graduate from the McGill School of Medicine and immediately get a job at a private clinic, in the first year you’ll personally be on the hook for $73 million. This is where we should note that Canada, unlike most other democratic countries, artificially limits the number of students that can be accepted to medical schools each year. As recently as 2018, the Government of Quebec cut the number of students allowed into Quebec medical schools, arguing that too many doctors were graduating.
Get all of these insights and more into your inbox by signing up for the First Reading newsletter here.
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